Jawbone Makers Dream Big for Tiny Headset

Jawbone, the Bluetooth headset from Aliph, just got a Spring makeover.

Aliph released a new version of its headset, called Jawbone Prime,that offers improved audio quality especially in extremely noisy and windy environments, a more comfortable fit and fresh colors.

“We are trying to get an in-person level voice quality even if you are in an extreme noise environment,” Hosain Rahman, co-founder and CEO of Aliph told Wired.com while on a tour of the company’s sound labs in San Francisco a few weeks ago. “We want the same kind of audio quality as you would get while speaking in a quiet room while you have a pounding jackhammer in the background or while at the club or on the peak of a hill.”

Aliph was founded in 1999 and released the first Jawbone headset in 2004. The device designed by famed industrial designer Yves Behar was immediately seen as a breakthrough in the mobile headset market for its looks and the quality of audio. Last year Aliph released a smaller version of the headset with Bluetooth capability called Jawbone 2.

But the latest product release masks more ambitious plans in the company. Aliph hopes to take Jawbone out of the “yet another Bluetooth headset” category and transform it into a device that could become an “audio gateway” for the consumer. Think news, weather, music or even language learning modules combined with a headset in a way that would bring term ‘wearable computing’ to life.

“The headset is the right form factor to be that agent into the digital world,” says Alex Asseily, co-founder of Aliph. “The whole audio input and output experience is best done in a wearable device like ours.”

With Jawbone Prime, the company’s engineers focused on solving the interference created in a windy environment. The company’s proprietary sensors and new Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms make it possible to eliminate that interference from wind speed of upto 10 mph, says Aliph.

“What’s the nirvana of the mobile phone communication experience?” says Asseily. “It’s a device that allows me to feel as if I am truly face-to-face in communication irrespective of what the background is like.”

The Jawbone Prime also offers better ear fit for users and can be simultaneously connected to two Bluetooth-enabled devices.

The device, which is the fourth iteration of the Jawbone product, will start retailing in stores nationwide from May 2 for $130. In addition to the usual black, brown and platinum, the Jawbone Prime will be available in eye popping purple, red, yellow and green.

The improvements though are just a small step as the company tries to take on a bigger goal. “We are looking at wearable computing, which we see an opportunity for us to use the audio medium extensively,” says Asseily.

Aliph is currently technologies such as speech recognition as a way to bring more functionality to its headset. The company could take a leaf out of Apple’s playbook there. Apple launched its latest iPod shuffle with speech recognition that tells users what song it is playing, the artist and the names of the playlists.

Asseily and Rahman won’t reveal when Aliph will release a device with a comparable speech recognition feature but say they are big believers in the technology. Meanwhile, the company’s rival BlueAnt launched a voice controlled Bluetooth headset last year.

Aliph is also starting to work with phone makers much more closely to optimize its devices for popular handsets. “Today phones still can’t given that in-person communication kind of voice quality yet 90 percent of the time people are talking on these devices,” says Asseily.

But the Jawbone’s rivals are closing in. Aliph faces an increasingly competitive and commoditized market. Competitors such as Plantronics and BlueAnt have introduced headsets are mimic the Jawbone’s design and offer comparable audio quality.

For Aliph the challenge is to now stay ahead long enough to deliver on its plans for an innovative wearable computing product.